HCMC – The central State Bank of Vietnam has categorized local credit institutions into four groups with the last group disallowed for credit growth this year.
Meanwhile, the maximum credit growth assigned for the other groups are 17%, 15% and 8% respectively, according to Directive 01/CT-NHNN issued on Monday. After six months of deployment, the central bank will consider adjusting the credit growth rate for each group to meet the monetary and credit changes, ensuring the goal of the monetary policy.
Earlier in late 2011, Governor Nguyen Van Binh of the central bank informed the 2012 credit growth would fluctuate from 15% to 17% depending on each bank.
The central bank also requested the credit institutions to make plans on credit growth and properly roll out their plans to control their credit growth in 2012, with the forex rate factor taken into account.
The outstanding loans will include funds used for bond purchase as well as outstanding loans in trust funds of institutions other than the credit ones.
The directive mentioned the ratio of outstanding loans for discommended sectors over the total outstanding loans in 2012 should be restrained at below 16%. Particularly, stock investment loans, property loans and consumer loans are not encouraged, while loans for buying or repairing homes and investment loans for building houses for lease to low-income earners or completing housing development projects are excluded from the list.
In addition, as for the lenders with credit growth and/or ratio of outstanding loans for discouraged sectors exceeding the stipulated levels, the central bank will force them to double their reserve requirements. Other measures will also be taken to restrict their business scopes.
Several HCMC-based banks said they have not received the new decision on which group they belong to. The classification of credit institutions is a new regulation of the central bank, unlike previous years when a single credit growth was applied to all banks such as 25% in 2010 and 20% in 2011.
